Report finds 'shocking and dispiriting' fall in children reading for pleasure | Hacker News Reader

Report finds 'shocking and dispiriting' fall in children reading for pleasure

theguardian.com

15 pointspseudolus7 comments

I don't find it surprising. Leisure time in adults has often been co-opted by "working a hustle" (aka working a second or third job to afford to live). And when they finally do go down, they put on TV or their phones. Of course kids are going to mirror their parents behavior.

I'll even blame videogames to a certain extent. You used to have to read a lot of text to get the story of a videogame, but now it's all voiced. Games like "Sea of Stars" where it's still text based are the minority these days. And they'll probably become even more of a minority with the rise of AI narration.

For those who remember "Reading Rainbow" - it was taken off the air at the time of "no child left behind" because PBS put a emphasis on learning to read, and didn't have the budget to continue Reading Rainbow.

It's sad, but at a time when there are more books than one could ever read in a dozen lifetimes, reading has been set aside. I almost wonder if the pendulum will swing back, and humankind will become oral storytellers once again.

> Leisure time in adults has often been co-opted by "working a hustle"

They don't even need to wait for adulthood to experience this when they can be required to collect a certain number of book quiz points every week, thus mentally enshrining reading as as assignment / punishment and not something that's ever done for fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Reader

Does Pizza Hut still offer pizza in exchange for reading books? Pizzas are more fun to collect than "quiz points"

> It's sad, but at a time when there are more books than one could ever read in a dozen lifetimes, reading has been set aside.

It is just like with the internet: finding quality stuff is incredibly difficult. The bookstores are full of crap around here (DE).

Cell phones and a change in culture where being bored is not acceptable.

In the presence of more immediately stimulating media, children will prefer watching screens. The amount of times I read out of boredom or alternatives is huge.

There needs to be a deliberate push against immediate gratification in media consumption.

That is part of it but to my first hand experience not the biggest influence. The biggest influence are the parents and to some degree grandparents. Kids can learn to balance media consumption and love reading. If parents zone out themselves on a mobile screen, what should the kids do?

For me personally, once I find a great book that hooks me, it immediately rekindles a love of reading for pleasure. Wondering if generational divide plays into this, because I also grew up watching Reading Rainbow and going to book fairs. Reading for fun was highly incentivized.

I agree that the hardest part is finding a book that catches and holds someone's attention. I think booktok starts to meet this need, having personal recommendations is huge and a lot of what I choose to read now comes down to recommendations (goodreads, StoryGraph, etc.).

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